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Saturday, October 7, 2017

How to show your phone's photos on the big screen TV

We had company over for dinner last night and, invariably, there came a time where they started showing us pictures from their last trip. They opened the photos on their phone, then we would pass the phone around.

Wait a minute!

We can do better than that.

Let's have a real slideshow using the big screen TV. We have a TV with several HDMI ports. In HDMI 2 we have plugged in a Chromecast device. The phone in question is an iPhone. The Chromecast device works just fine with either iPhone or Android. You can purchase them for about $35 at Amazon, or any electronics store like Best Buy.

Here's what you do:

Set the TV source to HDMI2 (whatever port has the Chromecast device plugged in)

Connect the phone to the same WiFi hotspot that the TV/Chromecast is connected to. Our household hotspot is "Geeks Hotspot" When we first installed the Chromecast, we followed the instructions to connect it to that hotspot.I told our friends to go to the WiFi settings on their iPhone and connect to Geeks Hostpot. I gave them the password.

Open Google Photos and open the first photos you want to show, then tap the chromecast button in the upper right.

You should now be seeing that photo on the TV. On an iPhone, you will need to swipe left to see the next photo. On Android, you can tap the 3-dot menu and choose Play Slideshow to have the photos progress automatically.

Chris Guld is President and Teacher-in-Chief at GeeksOnTour.com. She has been in computer training and support since 1983. She is now a Top Contributor for the Google Photos Forum, owner of the LearnGooglePhotos.com blog, and author of Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos. She loves to teach! If you want to learn, you’ve come to the right place.